


Eurydice's Fall

by bosspigeon



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Androids, Canon-Typical Violence, Deathclaws, Female Character of Color, Flashbacks, Gen, Gore, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, Pre-war synth, Pregnancy, Railroad HQ, Self-Mutilation, Surrogacy, Synth!Sole Survivor, Trans Female Character, complicated family relationships, dogmeat is a good dog, drugs???, feral ghouls, hancock is a bro, identity crisis, not much drugs, other companions mentioned - Freeform, robot gore, sketchy robotics labs, there are a lot of feelings and i am sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 01:24:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6544744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bosspigeon/pseuds/bosspigeon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It still feels like it was just yesterday she was sipping coffee as she looked out the window over her green lawn and white picket fence. It's enough of a struggle waking up in a war-torn hell 200 years later and feeling like no time had passed. But she survives. She adapts. She fights tooth and nail to get back what was taken from her when it feels like a week ago all she had to worry about was what to cook for dinner. And then a savage encounter with a deathclaw rips everything she ever knew from her grasp to fizzle under the wasteland sun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The cracked earth soaks up her blood like it’s dying of thirst, leaving only a few dark splotches behind. It hurts, in a distant sort of way, but not nearly as much as her spine cracking mercilessly against broken concrete as she's flung backwards by the enraged Deathclaw shaking her off its razor-sharp claws.

She nearly bounces off the wall with the force of it, slides to the ground in a heap, and everything south of her ribs feels hollow, empty, and her heart's pounding so hard like it's going to give out any second. Suddenly, she knows this is what dying feels like. She wraps one arm around the tatters of leather that once protected her ruined stomach, expects to feel sticky wetness, thick, clinging pulp and ribbons of gore that used to be organs, and instead--

Instead there's a stinging little  _ pop  _ at her fingertips. Like crackling towels fresh out of the dryer, or  Nate dragging his socked feet across the carpet to poke her arm and make her jump. A static shock, followed by a pitiful creak, then a low, whirring whine not unlike an engine wheezing to a stop when the batteries have gone.

She's afraid to look down.

She looks up instead. The Deathclaw is lurching towards her, one leg bloodied and dragging as it huffs and snarls and slinks slowly closer, wounded, but determined to finish her off and retreat to its den to snack on her corpse and lick its wounds.

She'd been so stupid, stumbling into the pit the monster called home. One split second of inattention, a missed step through some tangled grass, and she's sliding down a steep, rocky incline into a deep gulch full of rusting metal and broken mortar, Eurydice into Tartarus, only Orpheus is dead with frost crusted on his eyelashes and a bullet in his heart.

There's dust in her eyes and something digging into her back, and she scrabbles for her gun, where the  _ fuck _ is her gun?

Her blindly groping fingers close around something smooth that could be the stock of her rifle, and she drags it closer. There's a telltale sound of dry bones clacking together that tell her what she's found instead, and while the sudden calm after the clattering gives her time to scrub the dirt from her eyes, it's stark enough for dread to sink it's cold claws into her gut.

She rolls out of the way just in time to avoid lethal  _ non-metaphorical _ claws sinking into her spine.

She's managed to fuck up routine rounds around the Starlight settlement, stupidly stumbling right into the kind of danger she needed to keep unsuspecting settlers away from.

She knows she'll die, but she'll die making sure one less horror will threaten innocent people. Preston will make a good general, no matter what he seems to think.

The fight’s not a long one. She hasn't gone up against a deathclaw outside power armor, and definitely not as sparsely armed as she is. She was expecting stingwings, bloatflies, maybe a nest of mole rats as a worst-case scenario, but this is not something she planned for. She can evade the swiping claws for a minute or two maybe, but the landing jarred her knee, maybe even broke it if the pain is anything to go by, and she can only hobble so fast in the limited space. She fires an entire clip into it, only manages to wound its leg and piss it off, and it knocks her down with a massive hand when she fumbles to reload.

 

Her mind is clear when it scoops her up and shakes her like a ragdoll, even though it feels like her brain is sloshing around between her ears. She feels every single inch of each one of its claws sinking into her belly with a sharp sort of hyper-focus.

What was she thinking, calling herself General? Thinking she could find her son on her own in an endless radioactive hellscape crawling with nine foot lizards, colossal scorpions, horror upon horror out for blood. She graduated from  _ Harvard _ , for god's sake! She was on the debate team in high school, played tennis, spent her formative years sequestered in libraries after hours to secure scholarships and grants and scraping together everything she'd need for a happy, picturesque white-picket-fence suburban life.

Nate was the soldier, not her.

Her fingers clench around her gun, white-knuckled under splashes of red, to keep from shaking. Death lurks closer, teeth bared. It cocks its head at her almost curiously, leans in close to sniff her. What's left of her stomach clenches, stuttering lungs freezing as it inhales through its mouth, then exhales.

Her wedding band gleams on her hand as she shoves the muzzle of her rifle between the beast’s teeth and squeezes the trigger, splattering her face with blood and shattered scales and chunks of grey matter. The hulking creature slumps, pitches over sideways, and hits the hard-packed dirt with a sound like a small landslide. There are a few leftover nerve twitches the ripple across its thick scaly hide, and then it is still, horrid maw gaping and oozing blood and saliva.

She closes her eyes, heaves a weak, shuddery breath. And then she looks down.

She expects to see the ropy coils and lumps of her entrails strewn about, a pool of blood being hungrily guzzled by the parched, irradiated earth. She's prepared herself for the grisly sight. Accepted it, even.

She has not prepared to see shimmering coils of metal, frayed wires sparking, an oozing puddle of something thick and reddish and too darkly iridescent to be blood. Somehow, seeing what could easily be the gutted inside of a television set or a car’s engine is far worse that seeing clumps of mangled viscera, and she dry-heaves painfully for several long minutes, even longer when she realizes that was must have been some facsimile of a stomach (something like a half-deflated kickball, only black and shiny-smooth) is lying a few feet away, leaking a pasty slop flecked with bruise-colored corn kernels.

She wants to scream, but nothing comes out but a broken whine, and she soaks her fingers in the oily sludge trickling from the yawning chasm that was once her torso. She can see the bottom of her ribcage and the top of her pelvis, and they gleam a dull silver in the harsh afternoon light cutting down from above. If she hunches a bit (nearly falling over without the… skin? Muscle? To hold her upright) she can see the glittering segments of her spine, the only thing holding the two halves of her together aside from a few mangled bits of skin(?), leather, and twisted wires. She supports the flimsy remnants of her upper body with one arm, and feels out the metallic atrocity that is her body with a startlingly numb horror.

There are parts that mimic natural organs here and there that she can make out, as if someone attempted to replicate the illustrations from an anatomy textbook using parts from a box of dismantled electronics. She finds what could be a kidney, a palm-sized grey lump with the spongy texture of a stress ball, and when she squeezes it leaks what smells like pure, undiluted ammonia. But mostly it's an undecipherable mess of broken circuitry, torn tubing, and sputtering servos. A part of her wants to ask questions, but another stomps them down, buries them under the nagging bite of morbid curiosity. It takes a bit of effort of feeling around for the knife in her boot, but once she’s managed she begins meticulously scraping at the skin of her forearm with the sharp edge.

She shaves off the first few layers of ( _ synthetic _ , says an insidious little whisper in her cranium) skin, and it  _ hurts _ , and she  _ bleeds _ , like she has dozens of times before, when she cut herself chopping vegetables for dinner, or scraped her elbow when Nate tried to teach her how to roller skate. Only this time, she gathers the “blood” on the pads of her fingers, rubs them together and feels the viscosity, like motor oil, but thicker, almost honey-like. It smells strange too, familiar in the way that your own smells are, like nothing at all until you find them at the source. Dull, sort of earthy, but clean and crisp underneath. It tastes like cold metal.

She scrapes deeper and deeper, until she can catch her broken nail on a little flap of pseudo-flesh and pry it up, peeling back speckled material she once thought of as her skin to reveal tendons of brightly colored wire. Cutting deeper still, she finds slim, arcing metal rods that mimic a radius and ulna. She peels her forearm down to the elbow, ignores the pain, noting dimly that it actually hurts far less than it should. She thinks back on her life (what she  _ thinks _ was her life) before the Vault, and she recalls feeling pain, but now it's like some dull throb, easy enough to ignore. Her hand looks like some monstrous fruit from a science fiction movie when she shucks away the outer layers with careful, precise cuts, and underneath there is a spindly, grasping claw made of struts and wiring and hinges. She curls the hinged fingers loosely, and only vaguely recognizes it as her own appendage. It moves when she wants it to, the same as before, only now it's as if she's looking at something alien and unfamiliar, like it’s not even attached to her body.

This isn't her body. It  _ can't _ be her body. This has to be some sort of hallucination brought on by blood loss. Any second now, she'll pass out, and maybe she'll be rescued before she bleeds to death.

But her vision remains clear,  _ painfully _ clear, her brain firing on all cylinders (she winces a bit at her own turn of phrase) and she isn't waking up in a bed back at Starlight with Codsworth fussing over her and Dogmeat curled up on her feet.

She clenches the metallic claws again, stares at them, then down at her butchered abdomen. And she begins to cry, great, heaving, gut-wrenching sobs that whistle eerily past her damaged ribcage like wind through bare grey trees. She falls backwards into the dirt, covers her eyes with her flesh-like hand, and shakes and moans and sobs. Nothing makes sense, she can't even begin to piece together a logical conclusion, all she can do and lie there in the rubble beside a deathclaw’s corpse, wishing desperately her false lungs weren't too torn up for her to scream.

After what must be hours and hours of just lying in the dirt, torn nearly into and wondering when she’ll wake up from this  _ nightmare _ , everything goes dark.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly wakes up to questions, and no real answers. Nothing save for a slip of metal no bigger than a dime and the best synth detective the Commonwealth's ever seen to help her. And Dogmeat.

The hospital is a bustling hive of activity, the halls swarming with nurses, doctors, patients and visitors alike, but Molly is hardly paying attention. The entire world beyond this clean little hospital room is little more than a faint buzz at the edge of her senses, everything narrowed to the solid rhythm of her shoes against the polished linoleum, the soft beeping of monitoring equipment, and the gentle, even breaths of the woman in the room’s lone hospital bed, occasionally broken by a sharp intake of breath and a small noise of discomfort.

Suddenly, there's a chuckle, warm and familiar as breathing. “Malati, stop pacing,” Navya chides her. “It isn’t going to make this happen any faster.”

Molly wrings her freckled hands and exhales heavily, turning to her sister lying comfortably composed in the bed, her long slim hands folded neatly over her distended belly. She has her long ebony hair braided over her shoulder, and her eyes are half-lidded. It's no wonder, considering she's been in labor since noon and it's nearly ten o’clock at night.

“I know it isn't, Navya, but I need something to do with myself! It's taking so long, I'm worried.”

Navya scoffs, but not cruelly. “Ha! You're always worried, choti. You get that from Papa, you know. You'll have grey hair before your thirtieth birthday, I can feel it.” She pauses, squinting a little as Molly fiddles with a bit of hair she's been nervously twisting since they arrived. “I think I see one now, actually. A nice little skunk stripe, just like Papa!”

“Stop teasing, didi,” she says wearily, and perhaps just a bit defensive. But Navya always did like to use her clout as an older sister to tease.

“That wouldn't be any fun. You scrunch up your nose when I tease you. It's so cute.”

Molly does her best to relax her face, turning away so Navya can't see her struggle. “I should have never asked you to do this,” she says in lieu of a retort. It wouldn't do well to argue, with how much Navya’s done for her, even before all this. The wedding costs, the down payment on their little house in the suburbs, even Codsworth, their shiny new Mr. Handy robot, Navya has been there the whole way, helping where she and Nate couldn't quite meet the costs of a new marriage on their own.

“Ahhh, be quiet, choti, I offered.” She laughs again, softer this time, and Molly can't help turning around to look at her, with her high cheekbones, lean face, and soft cow eyes. She has a look about her, fond and gentle and endlessly patient, even if she does like to tease. “Always trying to take credit for my decisions. I could never figure out why you did that.”

_ So you had someone besides yourself to blame _ , Molly thinks, but doesn't say. Navya has always been the sort to take on other people's burdens, ever since they were children. She's only five years older, but she's taken responsibility ever since Papa and Mammi passed. Molly fondly remembers cold winter days when Navya would make sure she bundled up before heading out to play, evenings spent watching her big sister cook a meal for them both while their auntie was at work, Navya following her like a particularly protective shadow as she went door to door on Halloween. She even checked Molly's candy before she let her touch it afterwards.

“Malati, come here,” Navya says, shaking her from her thoughts. She pats the edge of the bed and smiles warmly, and Molly moves quickly to obey. When she sits, Navya takes Molly's hand between her own, squeezes firmly. Her fingers have always seemed so  _ warm _ . “I am doing this because  _ I _ want to, do you understand? I'm doing this because I  _ want _ to give you and Nate the family you dream of. I want you to have the perfect life, like Papa and Mammi wanted for you. The house, the picket fence, the children. You… you deserve it, you deserve to have this happiness.”

There's something strange in her expression, her eyes just a bit tearful, the corners of her mouth pinched. She's never been the type to hide her feelings. Navya Mehta has been a shameless whirlwind of vibrant emotion all her life, a stark comparison to her wilting flower of a sister. But as quickly as it comes, it passes, and she gently kisses Molly's forehead.

“I want nothing more than my baby sister's happiness.”

The door creaks open, and Nate pokes his head in, holding two steaming styrofoam cups and smiling crookedly. “I'm not interrupting anythin’, am I?”

“Nothing more than sisterly bonding, Nate!” Navya says cheerily.

He smiles, and crosses the room to kiss Molly's hair and give her a cup, full of black coffee. She takes a long sip and sighs happily. “Well, I'm glad for that. Shaun is gonna have the best auntie in all of Massachusetts when he's born, ain't he?”

Molly clasps Navya’s hand again and beams broadly at her. “Yes, he is.”

___

Molly wakes with a gasp so sharp it makes her lungs burn, and her heart is beating so hard she feels it's trying to flee her chest. Everything around her is blurry, and she fumbles for her glasses, but she can't find them. Her head is spinning and she can't quite seem to focus her eyes, and the longer she goes without proper vision, the more her chest tightens.

There's the sensation of weight shifting at the foot of her bed, and a high, eager whimper. “Dogmeat?” she slurs, reaching out and burying her fingers in thick, coarse fur. She focuses on the brown and black smudge that is her constant companion’s face, and her chest unclenches little by little. He whines even more, but she holds him at bay until she can make out his big brown eyes and wet black nose. “Hey, buddy,” she breathes, relieved, “I missed you!”

His entire body wiggles at her greeting, the rickety bed shaking with the force of his enthusiasm. He licks her face and yips happily, shoving himself full-body into her lap so not an inch of them is apart. She can feel his tail thumping wildly against her calf, his hard black nails digging into her thighs. She laughs and hugs his neck, smooches between his ears, and lets him slather her in puppy kisses until she's pretty sure she smells like nothing but dog saliva.

There's a sharp whistle at the door, a crumbling stone archway she recognizes instantly. With the faint musty smell of old stone and dust, she knows she’s in the catacombs under the Old North Church.  “Dogmeat, down!” Nick snaps.

Dogmeat whines and shoves his wet nose into the crook of her neck, giving the synth detective an absolutely pitiful side-eye. “He's fine, Nick,” she says, scritching gently behind the hound’s pointed ears until he eagerly flops over so she can rub his tummy. “I bet he's missed me. How long was I out?”

Nick doesn't answer the question, instead meandering to her bedside and pulling up a chair. He sits down, joints creaking a bit, and levels her with a strange look, yellow eyes bright and piercing as high beams through a heavy fog. “When were you gonna tell me, pal?” he asks, his raspy voice pitched low.

She blinks at him. “Uh… tell you what?”

His face crumples, and he looks so tired, so sad. “Come on, Molly, no games. I'm the last person who'd out you, you gotta know that.”

Her brows furrow, and she frowns at him. “Nick, I have no clue what you're talking about,” she says slowly, fidgeting with her blankets. “You're starting to scare me.”

“You ain't the only one that's scared, sister,” he says, tipping back his hat to rub at his forehead. “This whole shebang has Institute written all over it, and the only thing keeping me together is knowing they couldn't have gotten a dame like you without one hell of a fight.”

Her insides feel like they’re tying themselves into knots, something terrifying building up inside her like bile. “Nick, seriously, what are you--”

He looks up at her, thin mouth pinched into a grim line. He inhales, slow and rattling, then exhales, his gaze hard. “When were you gonna tell me you're a damn synth, Molly?”

Her breath freezes in her lungs, and she feels her eyes go wide. She spares a quick glance down at the hand on Dogmeat’s soft belly, expecting to see it stripped bare and skeletal like a shiny dead tree. She sees nothing but her own freckled skin, and she lets out the breath she was holding. Suddenly shaking with nerves, she laughs, just a bit too sharply to be convincing, even to herself. “Nicky, I... I'm not a synth.”

He scowls at her and lights up a cigarette, before leveling her with the coldest look she's ever seen. “You've never had the face for lying,” he says, low and rough, nearly a growl. She clings to Dogmeat just a little tighter, and he works up a growl of his own and bares his teeth at Nick.

“Is anything you told us even real?” he demands, blowing smoke from his nose. “Are you really from Vault 111, is your son  _ really _ missing? Who are you, really?” His skeletal hand twitches, as if it wants to go to the six-shooter he keeps tucked away under his coat. Her heart skips a beat.

“Nick, I don't know what's going on, but you'd damn well better stop,” she says, her voice quavering, everything inside her shrinking up to make room for a slowly growing dread. “If this is a joke, it isn't funny.”

“You're tellin’ me,” he says with a curled lip. “You’d better start talking, ‘cause I ain’t got a lot of patience for lies like  _ this _ .”

Tears well up in her eyes and her whole face feels hot. There are blood-tinged memories flashing behind her eyes, mingling with memories from before the war, and her head spins. She's not sure what's real anymore, and she wants to force down the sinister little thoughts of  _ something,  _ but she isn't sure what anymore. “Nick, tell me what's going on, please.” She feels her heart thrumming wildly, nerves ratcheting skyward as she stumbles and chokes on her words. “I don't know-- I can't-- Nick, please, you're one of my best friends,but  I don't-- I don’t know what you want here.” The tears overflow and pour down her cheeks hot and fierce, and Dogmeat does his best to lick them away, whining in confused distress.

Nick must see some truth in her face, because he deflates all of a sudden, fingers clenching around nothing, like his anger’s just been snatched right out of his grip. “You… really have no clue, do ya?” he asks softly. “Do you remember anything?”

“The pit,” she says quickly, hands shaking. “I-I think it may have been an old quarry? Th-there was a deathclaw, it ripped me to--” Her hands fly down to her stomach, hidden under a thin cotton nightgown, and she pats around until she's sure everything's where (and what) it's supposed to be. She's met only with pliant flesh, and thick, ropy scars. “Wha…?”

“That Carrington is a miracle worker, ain’t he?” he says quietly. Thoughtfully, he trips his fingers along the ragged edge of the hole in his neck. “The scars aren’t pretty, but you don’t live in a world like this without collecting a few mementos… Anyway, it’s a good thing your Doc’s got experience putting synths back together.” 

“I’m not a synth!” she exclaims shrilly, digging her fingers into the bedclothes. “I’m… I’ve got a family, had a family, I-I had parents, an aunt, a sister, a husband and son! From before the war! I know I did, that couldn’t… That couldn’t all be fake! It just… It just couldn’t!” It takes her a moment to realize she’s tugging at her hair, breathing heavily, dizzy and disoriented.

Suddenly she sees flashes behind her eyes, images of blood-drenched coils and wires and servos spilling from her mangled abdomen, bones made of shining metal. She feels like the walls are closing in, she can't  _ breathe _ !

She lifts her nightgown higher and scrapes at the scars on her stomach with ragged nails until she can feel herself bleed. Before she can dig deeper, Nick shouts and grabs her hands, pulling them up and away while she sobs raggedly.

“Woah, Molls, easy there” he says with a strained little rictus of a smile, oozing with the pretense of calm.

“I-I need to see, Nick, I have to--” She has to know, for sure, what’s under her skin. If it’s real, living flesh and blood, or if it’s... 

“What you need to do is calm down,” he tells her, holding her wrists firmly, but gently, careful not to scratch her with his spidery metal fingers. “You're not helping anything by tearing yourself to pieces.” Molly struggles for a bit before she slumps, weak and defeated, tears streaming down her face.

“It can't all be fake, Nick. I-it can't be. What am I even doing this for if it isn't real? What about Nate? A-and Shaun? What’s this mean for them?” Her breath hitches and Nick gently reels her in, holds her and pats her back until she calms enough. She feels Dogmeat wiggle his face between them until he can lick gently at her chin, whining comfortingly.

“Shaun is… definitely real, Molls. No worries about that. Kellogg told us as much, remember? Nate too, we saw him in the vault.” He cringes a little, and she knows he’s recalling that somber trip to the frozen coffin that held her dead neighbors and husband.

“B-but how is that possible? I don’t understand.” She looks up at him, dark eyes welling with tears and swimming with confusion.

“You must be some kind of pre-war synth,” he says grimly. “I don’t know how it's possible, but we can't ignore the facts.” He freezes like something’s dawned on him all of a sudden, and goes rooting around  in his pockets, coming up with a round titanium chip etched with some strange insignia. Without her glasses, the finer details are too delicate to make out clearly, but just the shape is familiar enough to strike something in her chest.

“It says Cambridge Robotics on the back,” he tells her what she already knows without needing to see it, and he hands her the chip. “Doctor Carrington found it when he was rewiring your spine. Says it was tucked away just between your temporal bone and your first cervical vertebra. Wasn't wired in or anything, just soldered. Like an internal brand.”

Her hand goes to the back of her neck, feeling through her scruffy, dry hair until she finds a neat little surgical scar. “I remember Cambridge Robotics, from back before…” She trails off, clears her throat. Nick doesn't mention it. “They were a small company. A wannabe competitor for RobCo and General Atomics. They were too new and unknown to be much of a threat, so they were pretty much ignored.”

“Musta been doing some freaky stuff behind closed doors,” Nick muses. “According to Carrington, they haven't seen a Synth quite like you before. Your wiring’s completely different from Institute synths, top to tail, and you seem to be somewhere between Gen 2 and 3, given your design. You're, ah, parts aren't bioengineered, like a Gen 3, but you're more realistic than 1 or 2. Synthetic organs designed to mimic biological processes, but at a fairly basic level. Neurological pathways wired into internal clocks that trigger biological urges like the need to sleep or eat. It's all very complex, apparently.”

He pulls a file out of his jacket, hands it over. It's full of documentation taken by Carrington and Tinker Tom, with notes scribbled in the margins and then crossed out with neat red streaks. She sighs and flips through until she comes across X-rays and anatomical sketches compared to medical textbook illustrations. “There's so much…”

Nick rubs the back of his neck, looking a bit sheepish. “You were out for more almost three weeks, so, uh, the eggheads had plenty of time to study. They even brought in Doctor Amari for a brain exam. It took quite a bit of work to put you back together.” Molly's starting to feel ill, and she must look pretty green, because Nick hastily changes the subject. “So, anything else you recall about this Cambridge place? If there's one nearby, maybe we can do a bit of digging, see if we can't find some answers.”

Molly nods weakly, head feeling suddenly heavy as she recalls, with slowly dawning horror. “My sister worked there.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly, Nick, Codsworth, and Dogmeat investigate the mysterious Cambridge Robotics Lab. Feral ghouls and secrets abound. Dogmeat continues to be a good dog.

It will never feel quite right, walking down the ruined streets of Boston, past broken windows and crumbling walls, down devastated sidewalks she strolled countless times. Sometimes her feet take her places she used to know, like that little malt shop on the corner, or the baby boutique where she and Nate shopped for Shaun’s first onesies, the diner where she waited tables to pay for her textbooks. All gone, now, claimed by supermutants or raiders, feral ghouls or radroaches, if not simply reduced to smoking piles of radioactive rubble.

She remembers the way well enough. She remembers taking Navya lunch between classes on weekdays, picking her up for a girl’s day out, or just stopping by so her big sister could chatter about her latest engineering marvel.

Molly’s head aches wondering how much of her memories, these echoes of familiarity impressed into the back of her mind like well-worn paths, are even really hers. She thinks too much as she leads the way through the streets, only straying from the beaten path to duck into alleyways or side streets when an obstacle appears, swarming enemies and collapsed buildings alike.

She tries not to think, but her head is a cyclone of questions, and she's very nearly grateful when Dogmeat growls a warning before they're set upon by a pack of mutant hounds, their masters close behind.

It’s strange to have such a massive secret, but she’s kept the discovery away from most of her companions. It’s hard enough to deal with herself, she feels she needs to know more before she can string together a decent enough explanation. It certainly doesn’t help that she’s not sure how many of them would react.

Nick already knows, of course. As it turns out, it was Dogmeat that found her in the ravine, her beautiful, wonderful mutt. According to Nick, she was missing for nearly two days before Dogmeat managed to sniff her out and lead someone to her. Preston, Nick tells her, of course it was Preston. It was Preston who called for Nick, and Nick for Deacon, and together they managed to get her to Railroad HQ for treatment.

Deacon is delighted by the discovery, finds it somewhat hilarious, but he tries to keep a damper on it for her sake. She's grateful, in a way, for his levity, makes things a bit easier to swallow.

Preston, being Preston, doesn't care what she is, he tells her. “You're the General, and my friend, and that's all I need to know,” he tells her with that sweet, guileless smile, patting her hand. “I'll handle the Minutemen while you rest up, so don't worry about a thing.”

Codsworth, of course, absolutely _must_ know, seeing as he'd been fretting and fussing and rallying the troops since she didn't return from her patrol. He'd strong-armed his way into tagging along with Nick to visit her in recovery, and could hardly be moved from her side.

“My goodness, you're a synth!” he gasps when she tells him, optics dilating in surprise and pincers whirling. “I'd no idea, you're quite the impressive specimen!” Beyond that, he has no real insight to offer. For all her wires and servos, she's obviously been meticulously designed to fool even robots. _Other_ robots.

“If I may be so bold, mum,” he tells her later, when they’ve been left alone, “perhaps that's why I've always felt such kinship with you. Why, we're practically cousins!” He chortles good-naturedly, and in spite of her own reluctance to face what she really is, she finds his words oddly comfortingly.

Curie, too, is let in on the secret, due in large part to her frequent forays to the Railroad HQ. She and Tinker Tom get along famously in spite of their differing fields of study, and she is determined to befriend Glory at all costs. Carrington, of course, enjoys having another medical expert about, however little his dour expression shows it.

The former Miss Nanny is perhaps even more delighted by Molly's true nature than even Deacon, and it's clear she'd be content to poke and prod for hours to figure out just how her friend-- and now, fellow synth-- works. Thankfully, she's fairly tactful about her desire to study Molly's newfound synthetic anatomy, and maybe when things are a bit less uncertain and, well, _terrifying_ , she'll be willing to let Curie marvel all she likes.

Hancock will probably take it alright, easygoing as he is. MacCready doesn't seem the type to care much. Piper, of course, may want to know every single detail, but beyond that she wouldn't be too put off once the circumstances were explained. Cait isn't the type to care, so long as she gets to punch something. She's proven herself to Strong already. She could be three molerats in a trench coat and so long as she can fight, he's content to fight alongside her.

Danse? She'd rather not think about Danse.

Even as distracted as she is, the supermutants are easy enough to dispatch once she's managed to detonate the mini-nuke in the hand of an encroaching Suicider. The premature blast annihilates three of them, leaving one or two stray hounds and a lone butcher that is dispatched with one good shot to the head, courtesy of Nick. Codsworth and Dogmeat clean up the baying mutant hounds, and then they're on the trail again, cutting down side streets and sneaking through rubble to avoid further delays.

When she sees the squat grey building with its half-collapsed sign, her heart stutters in her chest. The last time she saw it, she was a new mother, too busy with Shaun to visit her sister as often as she liked. She wasn't even able to see Navya that day. She'd left Shaun home with Codsworth for the sole purpose of having lunch with her sister, only to be told Navya was in the lab under orders to be left undisturbed.

The logo on the sign, though blasted and worn with age, is still easy enough to make out, and she feels a tingle at the base of her skull, reaches back to brush her fingers over the new, neat little scar there.

“There it is,” she breathes, and trudges her way through the rubble. Nick and Codsworth follow dutifully, with Dogmeat forging eagerly ahead with his usual puppyish enthusiasm, tongue lolling and tail waving like a banner. The front door is, predictably, blocked by a collapsed bus frame, no way to get inside. The windows have long been boarded over, as well as blocked from the inside with what look to be filing cabinets.

“I detect movement inside,” Codsworth says quietly, “I suggest we proceed with caution.”

Molly leads them around the back, where there’s a door nearly hidden behind a small mountain of rusted metal and broken concrete overflowing from a dumpster. She finds it sort of hilarious that the “No Smoking” sign is still intact, and the “No” is still partially obscured with faded red marker. She tests the knob, and it’s locked, of course, but she is armed with bobby pins and a screwdriver, and she makes short work of it.

“Still gotta know how a pre-war housewife knows how to do that,” Nick whispers in her ear. She laughs a little, grateful for the levity, and nudges him with her elbow.

“You learn a lot of interesting things in college, Valentine,” she tells him as she puts her shoulder to the door to push it open. It creaks loudly as it does, as if it hasn’t been opened in ages (it most likely hasn’t, she thinks) and she winces as the noise echoes down the dark hall they step into.  
  
The air is clammy and damp, smells of mildew and decay, and the eerie silence punctuated by the occasional drip or odd scuffle has all of them on edge. Dogmeat slinks close to the ground, ears back, nose working furiously. He approaches the end of the hall before the rest of them, and growls softly. Molly follows, peers around the corner, and sighs gustily. “Ferals,” she mouths.

The lobby is full of feral ghouls, at least a dozen milling about, and scattered on the floor are a few rotting corpses, most like unlucky raiders looking for someplace safe to hole up for the night. Now, they’ve been torn to pieces, discarded like the rest of the garbage littering the once-pristine marble floor.

“I’ll take care of this, mum,” Codsworth says, pincers snapping. Were he human, Molly can’t help but think he’d be cracking his knuckles. He shouts something about taking out the trash and charges forward, flamethrower blazing and sawblade whirling. The ferals try to fight back, but there’s really not much the shambling radiation-blasted shades of humans can do beyond succumb to being mowed down. Sure, a few try to fight back, scrabble at Codsworth’s hard metal casing, find weaknesses, but they lose fingers in the moving parts, and only succeed in getting close enough to trap themselves and be sliced in half or incinerated. Like always, Molly finds it just a little sad. At this point, she’s numb to most of the horrors of this awful world she’s awoken in. She can kill a man without blinking, wipe blood from her face like it’s nothing more than sweat. But as she picks through the withered corpses for any useful information or loot, she sees the tattered remains of labcoats, some still with name tags.

These are people she might have known, once. Human beings she may have passed in the street, chatted with in line for coffee, maybe shared a smile on a crowded bus.

She pushes the thought aside as she tears the ID card off a paper-thin, bloodied labcoat, tucking it into her pocket for later use. If she remembers correctly, there are more than a few doors blocked by a passcode, and she checks the still intact terminal behind the front desk for any information. Predictably, being the receptionist’s terminal, it doesn’t have much of value. An old appointment schedule, some meetings, the usual notice for all employees to keep their ID badges on at all times. She finds the building map, transfers the data to her Pip-Boy.

“If I remember right, Navya worked mostly on the second floor in R&D,” Molly says, poking at a spot on her glowing green screen. “I know the way, so we'll just head straight there. I want to get out of here as fast as possible.”

“Now wait just a minute, Molly,” Nick interjects, “Why the rush? There's a hell of a lot we don't know, about this place and about you. We need all the information we can get.”

“He is right, mum,” Codsworth says reluctantly, “If we're to get the information we need, we’ll have to scour this place top to bottom.”

Molly is silent for several long moments, long enough for Dogmeat to circle at her feet and shove his head underneath her hand. She inhales, long and deep, just a bit shaky. “You're right,” she mutters, rubbing at her face. Lit by the eerie green glow of her Pip-boy, she looks haunted, eyes sunken and dark. “Of course, you're right, I'm just… I'm being stupid.”

“Not stupid, Molls,” Nick says with a comforting little half-smile. “It's a lot for anyone to deal with at once. We can always come back later? Maybe send a few Minutemen to clear out the ghouls?”

Molly shakes her head, jaw tensing and hands curling into loose fists at her sides. “No,” she says firmly, “No, we're doing this now. _I_ have to do this now.”

Nick nods, Codsworth hums his approval, and Dogmeat whuffs a soft encouragement. “Then let's get to it.”

The first floor is mostly administrative, just as she recalls. Very little in the way of useful information, mostly employment plans, reports, and financial things. There are a few references here and there to mysterious projects, some inter-office emails expressing curiosity as to the inner workings of the basement level (“Of course there's a secret basement,” Nick scoffs, reading over Molly's shoulder, “What kind of shady company _doesn't_ have a secret basement?”), but beyond that, nothing more than gossip and complaints about annoying superiors.

There are more ferals here and there, not as many as there were in the lobby, but enough to give them all a workout. Molly takes a knock to the head when one bursts out of a locked closet she jimmies open, and gets a few scrapes and bruises before Dogmeat drags it off her so she can splatter its brains against the wall.

The staircase is half-collapsed and they pick their way carefully upwards. The second floor has significantly less in the way of ghouls, and what few there are meet a messy end. They pick their way through offices and labs, Nick unlocking terminals and Molly unlocking doors.

There are a few leftover robots strewn across lab tables and the floor, unfamiliar in design. They vary in shape, but they are all notably humanoid, sleek and petite, with dark, blank screens for faces. They lie still and loose-limbed as corpses, some cracked open with exposed wires, some missing limbs.

“Wonder why they didn't catch on,” Nick hums to Molly, who is turning over a disembodied metal hand in her own.

“Navya said it was because these models were too… stiff. Inhuman,” she murmurs, placing the severed hand gently on a nearby table. “Cambridge was all about providing a more organic, emotive experience, so they wanted to get their robots to look and feel as human as possible. I think it’s because they made people nervous.” She looks down at her own hand, resting on the edge of the cold metal examination table, inches away from dismembered hand. “No one wants something that can mimic humanity.”

“Makes sense,” Nick says. “Not a lot of people nowadays are comfortable with the thought of a machine doing all the things a human can. The more things change, the more they stay the same and all that.”

Codsworth sniffs haughtily. “They were quite rude, dismissing General Atomics robots as too _cold_ and _impersonal_. The nerve!” His optics droop a bit, pincers clicking like a nervous habit. He's practically sulking.

“You're very personal, Codsworth,” Molly says soothingly, bussing his shiny dome with a little kiss. “Very warm.”

The Mr. Handy whirs loudly in surprised delight, and Nick can practically see him blush. “You're too kind, Miss Molly,” he sputters happily, round body bobbing in some semblance of a bashful shuffle. Molly smiles.

Through the lab is another office, and the moment they step through the door, something in Molly's demeanor changes. Silently, slowly, she makes her way to a cubicle in the corner, sliding past the others without a second glance. There's a terminal there, a workspace littered with rusted metal parts and delicate little tools, a pinboard cluttered with faded, crumbling paper scraps. Molly ignores it all, and picks up a frame.

The glass is cracked, but intact, coated with dust, and she wipes it away with her sleeve. The picture inside is faded, but in fair condition still. It's her and Nate, she knows without looking. They’re sitting on a bench in the park, not paying attention to anything but each other, holding hands. In the corner is Navya, making a face as she snaps them cuddling over her shoulder.

“Oh, mum,” Codsworth whispers, hushed and weak. He almost sounds tearful.

She takes the picture out of the frame and slips it inside one of the many pockets of her jacket, and doesn't wait for Nick to say anything. She starts pulling out drawers and rifling through papers, and leaves him to handle the terminal.

He has it unlocked in a matter of seconds, and for a moment, he just stares at the list of entries blinking on the screen. “Hey, Molls,” he calls, gesturing to the terminal. “I think you should…”

She blinks at him like a radstag at the business end of a rifle for a second, then shakes herself and swallows. “Yeah. I… Yeah.”

He moves aside and lets her sit down. The swivel chair’s cushion puffs out a bit of dust when she does, and Dogmeat sneezes. Her hands hover over the keyboard for a moment, and then she selects the first item on the list.

She starts to read, voice quavering ever so slightly, as the words scroll across the screen.

 

> “ _Date: 4/12/2065_
> 
> I've finally made the breakthrough Renaud’s been looking for. I've figured out how to recreate biological impulses in a synthetic brain. Hunger, fatigue, arousal, I can recreate them, and trigger them with the appropriate stimuli. With some fine-tuning, my program could even grow over time. Develop preferences, likes and dislikes, positive and negative reactions based on emotional input and learned experience. I'm on the fast track to unlocking and recreating the human conscious and subconscious entirely with electronics. Combine this with the anatomical model the lab’s been working on, and we could be close to the world’s first true android.”

Molly's voice stalls, trails off, and there's a definitive click when she swallows that echoes in the silent room. She clicks on the next entry.

 

> “ _Date: 7/23/2065_
> 
> I call the program Malati. Off the record, of course. Officially, the program is designated JSM-00, but it sounds so cold. This is a thinking, learning program we’re developing. Isn't our whole shtick “a more lifelike experience?” At any rate, Malati is doing well. I've begun to introduce emotional information to its system. The concept of family and friends, that sort of thing. I'm not sure at this point how much it retains, but it seems to remember quite a bit. It reacts when I input data about its progress, showing definite spikes in neural activity in response to positive occurrences. I like to think it's as proud of its progress as I am.”

She breathes deeply, and there's a sense of something dawning, an understanding that weighs heavy on them all.

 

> “ _Date: 10/15/2065_
> 
> I've started taking it home with me. It sits on my desk while I work out problems. I like to leave it connected to my terminal while I log my studies of it, so it knows what's going on. It seems to activate on its own sometimes when I'm not working on it though. Like when I'm on the phone, or making dinner. Earlier today, I dropped a textbook on my foot and cursed, and I swear it tutted at me, like it didn't approve.
> 
> I think I've told it too much about Mammi.”

She doesn't hesitate before she selects the next entry.

 

> “ _Date: 2/8/2066_
> 
> Malati is coming along brilliantly. She's so clever. I turned on the light in my office this morning, and she started to make these strange little melodic hums. For a second, I thought she was malfunctioning, but once I listened, I realized she was _singing_! I must have input my birth date in her logs nearly a year ago, and she remembered! Clever girl.
> 
> It's been ages since anyone’s sung it to me. It's a bit embarrassing to admit, but I may have cried. She went nuts when I did, I had to assure her they were happy tears.
> 
> “ _Date: 4/12/2066_
> 
> A year ago today, I finished laying the framework for Malati’s cerebral structure, and today the engineers in B3 have started working on a scaffold for her physical interface.
> 
> I bought a cake for the occasion. After hours, of course. Threw a little party for my favorite program. She seemed to enjoy it. She wouldn't stop beeping. She kept throwing binary onto my terminal. Chloe was worried she'd gotten a virus, but she was just putting out the same message, over and over. 01010100 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101-- she’s saying ‘ _Thank you_.’
> 
> “ _Date: 6/15/2067_
> 
> It's been ages since I've been able to write a more personal journal. Malati’s been integrated into her physical interface today. We’re letting her settle for a while before we activate her, just to make sure we've worked out all the hiccups.
> 
> The circuit monkeys in the lab must think they're so funny for that stunt they pulled with her design. Someone with access to my personal effects must have been in on it, because they made her look so much like Mammi it's almost scary. But she's got Papa’s nose, like I do. More freckles, and some depigmentation for variety. She's… beautiful. I feel like a nervous mother, thinking about her waking up. I hope she can be activated soon. It's gotten a bit lonely at home without her.
> 
> “ _Date: 7/2/2067_
> 
> My name is Malati, and I was born today. I am 6 foot 1 inch tall, 180 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. Ms. Mehta wants me to write this entry for posterity, so I am doing so entirely on my own.
> 
> Ms. Mehta tells me my name means jasmine. It's a kind of flower. I hope I will get to see them someday. For now, I have to stay in the lab, while they make sure I am fully functional, but Mrs. Renaud says I will be ready to go outside in as little as a year. Mrs. Renaud is Ms. Mehta’s superior. She is the one who oversaw my development, and without her funding I would not have been able to exist.
> 
> But without Ms. Mehta I would not exist at all.
> 
> Ms. Mehta is very clever to have made me. She is responsible for creating my mainframe and programming, and she says that is what makes me what I am. Who I am. Ms. Mehta says that she is like my family.
> 
> I have a family.”

The dust motes in the air have settled, that's how still the air’s become. Even Dogmeat is stiff and silent at Molly’s side, Codsworth hovering as noiselessly as is possible with his powerful jets.

She just stares at the terminal for a long while, and she realizes a beat too late that she isn't breathing.

Apparently, she doesn't actually need to, but still, when she remembers to refill her lungs, they seem to burn with relief. She isn't sure what to think.

The journal, Navya’s journal, she copies onto a blank holotape for later, before standing up.

“There should be more in the basement,” she says, forcing her voice to remain level. “Official records rather than personal. Let's get moving.”

“Y-yes, mum, right away!” Codsworth exclaims, perhaps a bit too loudly.

They find Navya’s key card in the desk, and it gives them all the access they need. It gets the elevator running again, and in no time at all they're crammed inside and shuttling slowly below ground.

When it opens, the silence is oppressive, the darkness even more so. There's no groaning, no telltale shuffling or shambling, nothing but a low hum of electricity somewhere.

She turns on the light of her Pip-boy and casts it around them. There are bodies on either side of the elevator entrance, not the decaying corpses of raiders or scavvers, though. They’re shriveled, near-mummified, withered away in the near-sterile environment, but not fully decayed. Each one is wearing the tatters of a labcoat, and each one has its hands folded gently across its stomach, as if resting. There are dried flowers scattered over and around the remains.

But some of the flowers are fresh.

“Keep your guard up,” she whispers, drawing her pistol. Dogmeat sticks close to the floor, Codsworth holds his sawblade at the ready, and Nick stands at her shoulder, silent, as they make their way to the main lab. There's no resistance, not a single feral, not even a radroach, and that's reason enough for the solid knot of nerves in the pit of her stomach.

But as they get closer to their destination, the electrical hum grows louder. There's a light at the end of the hall, dim and flickering, and the hallway seems to stretch on longer and longer the more they edge towards it. Finally, they're outside the door, and within, Molly hears the telltale click of fingers on keys.

She rounds the corner, gun drawn, and takes in the lay of the land as quickly as she can.

There's an old generator against one wall, humming gently. The floor is littered with candles, lanterns. There's a cot in one corner, a threadbare blanket folded neatly on top. The heavy metal tables have been pushed against the walls save one, which is covered in wires and circuit boards and scraps of metal. In another corner, there's a sink, a fridge, a small cooking station put together with what appear to be bunsen burners. Near the far wall, back to them, is a desk with a terminal, and at that desk, is a person.

The stranger doesn't seem to be aware of their presence, mumbling under their breath as they peck away at their terminal. They’re rail-thin, with stooped shoulders and hair so long it nearly reaches their backside. Their labcoat is stained, frayed at the cuffs and hem, but still in one piece, and Molly marvels at the luck this scavver must have had to find one in such good condition.

Until said scavver turns, and they see the pocked, ruined face and startled black eyes of a ghoul.

“How did you get down here?” she rasps, snatching a soldering iron off her desk. Her long black hair is pulled back out of her face, but it's too fine and thin to stay put for long, it seems, because several lank strands fall to partially obscure the scarred, twisted visage. “Where did you come from?”

“We don't mean you any harm,” Nick says calmly, tucking his pistol pointedly into his belt. Molly holsters her gun too, and Codsworth lowers his saw. “We’re just looking for some information on synths.”

“Synths?” the ghoul scoffs. “If you're looking for the Institute, you're in the wrong place.”

“We’re not,” Molly says, taking a step forward. “Maybe synth is the wrong word. Androids. This facility made androids, right?”

“This facility made one android,” the ghoul corrects sharply. “Just one. And she-- _it--_ is long gone.”

“That's where you're wrong, sister,” Nick says, clapping Molly on the shoulder.

For a moment, the ghoul looks amused, if condescendingly so. She sneers, squints, looking between them. First at Nick, then Codsworth, then Molly.

The moment her sunken eyes settle on Molly, they go wide. Her mouth drops open, thin lips stretched into a gasp of shock.

“Malati?” she whispers, pushing up out of her chair. She steps forward, and Molly steps back, stomach fluttering with panic.

“Wh-who are you?” she demands, and she raises her gun again.

The ghoul is undeterred, shuffling forward, reaching out as if to touch.

Molly is frozen, heart pounding, eyes wide, fingering trembling on the safety.

The ghoul stands before her, reaches out to cup her face with dry, scarred hands, touching her skin and gasping as if she can't quite believe she's real.

“How?” she whispers, her wrecked voice trembling. “How is this possible? It's been… it's been more than 200 years, how can you be here?”

“Who are you?” Molly asks again, gun clattering from suddenly nerveless fingers. “Who…”

The ghoul smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners, and she laughs, wet and tearful. “Look at you,” she breathes. “I guess it's official. You're the pretty one, now, choti.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betrayal, heartbreak, and forgiveness. And more Dogmeat.

“Talk to me, choti, please,” the ghoul begs softly, weakly. She's still got her hands on Molly's cheeks, but Molly is frozen, staring, her eyes trying to make sense of the ragged scars and puckered skin that twist the face she can't possibly be seeing, not after all this time.

She still looks like Navya, in spite of it all. Still has the same long oval face, marred as it is by leathery scarring. Still the same narrow, upturned eyes, even gone solid black with only a pinprick of milky white in the center. From the high cheekbones (sunken and stark in a face shriveled by time and radiation) to the defined chin, she's still Navya, still the sister she'd left behind when she'd gone into the Vault.

She feels the tears well before she can even think to stop them, and in spite of all the conflicted feelings churning in whatever mimicry of a stomach she's got, she can't resist throwing her arms around the sad, ragged ghost of her sister and cling like she's going to drown. Navya’s crying too, shaking, even, babbling in the broken Hindi she'd been able to learn under the heavy yoke of assimilation before their parents had passed.

_ Their _ parents?

Just as quickly as the wave of tangled emotion comes upon her, it washes away in an icy rush and leaves her barren and numb. Navya is still clinging to her neck, stroking her hair, rocking them both back and forth, but Molly's chest feels painfully empty.

The holotape is burning in her pocket, trapped between their chests, the dull green words scrolling behind her eyes like they've been etched there. She goes limp, lifeless in her lost sister's tight grasp, and it takes a long moment for the radiation-ravaged woman to notice.

“Malati? Choti, what's wrong? I- I know I'm different now, but I-”

“Don't call me that,” Molly whispers, her voice wobbling weakly. “Don't you… don't you dare.”

“Malati…?” The woman, the  _ scientist _ , stares at her, wounded, like she's the one that's been wronged. It burns like bile in the back of Molly's throat, like battery acid or whatever sloshes around inside her gut.

“You… you can't…  _ don't _ call me sister,” she croaks weakly, “Not now. Not now that I know what I really am.”

Navya blinks oil-slick black eyes, wrinkled mouth slack. Dumbstruck and frozen, still as the old picture burning in Molly’s breast pocket.

“JSM-00,” Molly says, enunciating each letter with a sharp, crisp clarity, in spite of the tightness in her throat.

Navya’s entire body goes tense, and her yellowed teeth click together as her mouth snaps closed. She swallows, hard, and Molly can almost taste the guilt oozing from her pores. “So…” she says softly, weakly, eyes darting about. Wide and panicky when they flicker to the gun at Molly’s hip, to the new scars streaking her face. “You know. How?”

“Have you ever seen a deathclaw, didi?” she whispers, hand going instinctively to her stomach.

Navya pinches her lips shut, shakes her head. “I've heard of them,” she admits, “From traders, here and there.”

“I didn't know until one ripped me open,” Molly tells her, dragging her fingers, bent into a mimicry of wicked claws, across the armored vest protecting her belly. “Do you know how frightening it is, knowing that you are dying, looking down expecting to see your intestines dripping out of you, only to see wires and metal instead?” She nearly whispers it, but there's a steely edge that makes it seem implacably stark in the almost-silence. Behind her, she hears Codsworth murmur a queasy-sounding “ _ Gracious _ …”

“Choti, I-”

“How much of it was real, Navya? How much of  _ me _ is real?” She can't control the rising of her voice, the near-frantic edge. “I know I'm not your sister, really. I'm your… your pet project! Tell me, was my whole life a lie you planted in whatever Frankensteined circuitboard acts as my brain?” She swallows hard, and it feels like swallowing stones. “Was Nate in on it too? Was my whole life some sort of… fucked up experiment?”

“Malati, no,” Navya pleads, grabbing her by the shoulders. She seems so small, bony and pinched as she is, folded into a coat that bears two centuries worth of wear. Molly could break her thin little wrists one-handed, and she isn't quite sure how much of that is due to her own bones being made of metal, or the fact that she's been fighting for survival since she crawled out of that godforsaken hole in the ground.

“Tell me, big sister,” Molly growls, something hard and wild and hungry roiling in her gut. “Why I shouldn't just kill you right now.” In all the stories, when humans play god, their creations, their monsters, rise up and put them in their place. It would only be fitting, a dark part of her whispers. A part of her fed by the rage, the pain, the bloody-mouthed determination that's been bottled up inside her like a molotov since her husband and son, her entire fucking  _ life _ , were ripped away while she screamed and clawed at unyielding glass. She feels volatile as nuclear blast staring down at the strange and pitted face of the one woman in the world she never once doubted she could trust.

Navya’s eyes go even wider, and she shakes with fear, pinched lips moving soundlessly, trying and failing to find the words to pacify this… creature she's built.

“You don't wanna do that, Molls.”

The words take some time to puncture the haze of red swirling through her head, but when they do, it's like air being let out of balloon. She deflates, and suddenly everything in her feels dead, lifeless. “No,” she says, more to herself than the ghoul trembling before her. “No, I don't.”

She retreats, then, drained by wild changes of emotion, the stress, the fury and the misery in turn. She hardly knows what happens after. She feels Codsworth’s claw on her shoulder, Dogmeat licking between her fingers. Nick's gentle touch at her lower back as he guides her out of the ruins of Cambridge Robotics.

Navya is no longer a focal point, a beacon, but a shadow drifting at the edge of her conciousness, straining forward as if she wants to speak, but unsure what will happen if she does.

Imagine, Navya unsure. Navya’s never been unsure of anything in her life. But then again, that's a sentiment from the Molly that thought she knew her sister. The Molly that  _ had _ a sister.

How they get to Goodneighbor in one piece with the state she's in is anyone’s guess, and Hancock welcomes them with open arms. He sees the look on Molly's face, and whatever it looks like, it must stir something in him, because he tags along with them all the way to the Rexford, and slips a capped needle into Molly's hand when Nick's back is turned.

When she comes back to herself, she's sitting on the edge of a dirty mattress, and there's a needle of Med-X on the rickety night stand. Dogmeat is curled up at her feet, Codsworth clanking about the room trying to tidy up as much as possible.

Molly sighs and hunches over, digs the gloved heels of her hands into her eye sockets and rubs until they burn, before she stands and starts to undress.

The heavy leather field vest goes first, then the boots and gloves. The utility belt and trousers next, and all the various holsters and pouches she's got tucked away. She hauls her bulky white sweater over her head and drops down on the bed in her shorts and a worn out tank top, and stretches the stiffness out of her limbs.

She picks up the needle on the table, turns it over and over in her hands. It's inviting, for sure. Hancock knows her well, what she chooses to help get her through a particularly rough fight when she's aching down to her bones. This is a sort of fight all on its own, and she could definitely use the relief, never mind new information making her wonder how the hell chems work on her in the first place. Codsworth’s gone to the grimy little bathroom to salvage the disaster there; she wouldn't be interrupted until the chems were pulsing in her makeshift veins.

She clenches her fingers, notes the numbness in the hand she stripped down to metal what feels like a nightmare ago, and figures it's lucky she killed the feeling in her non-dominant forearm. She's just cutting a piece of utility cord to use as a tourniquet when a soft knock startles the needle from her hand. She curses when it rolls under the bed, but doesn't go after it. Supposes it's for the best.

“Come on in, Nick,” she calls out. “You know these doors don't lock for shit.”

After a bit of jostling, the door pops open, and it's not Nick standing there. It's Navya, stripped out of her labcoat. She's wearing a smock-ish sort of shirt underneath, sleeves rolled up over her pock marked forearms. “Never in my life did I think I'd hear you swear so casually, cho-- Malati.”

“So you did come,” Molly mumbles, too tired to be angry. She stands up and starts folding her discarded layers of clothing, laying them aside before she turns her attention to her weapons, laid out on the nearby desk. “Didn't know if I imagined it or not.” She turns her back to start disassembling her rifle for cleaning, and hears Navya close the door gently behind her. 

“I had to,” the ghoul says, soft and laced with nerves. “I need to… I know there's so much I have to explain. At least try to, anyway.”

Molly doesn't answer, but doesn't wait for the words either. She thinks she may be being a bit cruel, perhaps even petty, giving Navya the cold shoulder, but she doesn't have the energy to be the bigger woman. She counts out her rounds, sets them aside, starts cleaning each piece of her gun with motions made muscle memory by cold, hard necessity.

There's a scrape of wood on wood behind her, Navya pulling up a chair.

“Everything you remember before you started college, that's all... fabricated,” she begins, hesitant. How very like Navya to start with what she thinks to be the worst. To make the rest seem like a refuge. “I used some of my own memories as the basis for yours, and your programming filled in the blanks. I… expected it to be rudimentary at best. Childhood memories are often foggy, so you wouldn't question why so many things in the past seemed… unclear.”

She breathes deep, in and out, and there's a rough rattle in her lungs Molly’s familiar with now that she's acquainted with so many ghouls. “But you surprised me. You always did. Not only did you fill in the blanks, you fleshed them out. More than just scenarios, people, places, you made… sensations. Feelings. You took my… my lonely memories and made them your own in a way I could never have expected.

“I remember standing at the stove in Auntie Chanda’s tiny apartment when I was twelve. I was making macaroni and cheese, and I was alone because Auntie was working late. And then years later, I was sitting in our apartment, listening to you tell me how you remembered telling me all about your day at school while I made both of us macaroni and cheese for dinner while Auntie was at work.” Molly still doesn't turn around, but Navya barrels on with that painfully familiar determination, even as her voice trembles. “Whether it was… a holiday spent alone or a thunderstorm ridden out under a pile of blankets, you worked your way into every memory, and I… I could almost believe they were real, because  _ you _ did.”

Molly's fingers clench on her rifle’s stock, and she leans forward on the desk, nails digging in. Tears squeeze out unbidden, splashing darker spots into the dry skin on the back of her hands.

Navya stands up and comes slowly closer, cautiously, each footstep a measured thud against the creaking floorboards. Like approaching a wounded animal. Molly can feel the heat of her hand on the back of her shoulder before it makes contact. “I can't even… I can't imagine what you must be feeling right now, Malati. Anger. Hurt. Fear. Betrayal. You have every right. Every right to hate me. But please.  _ Please _ know that however we started, I have loved you as a sister since you woke up on that lab table.”

She hunches over the table then, digs her bitten fingernails into the surface, and can't quite manage to bite back the sob that tears out of her throat. Then, there are thin arms around her middle, Dogmeat shoving himself between them as well, and she turns around to hug her sister properly.

She still has so many questions, worries, deep-seated hurt that isn't just going to go away thanks to a few heartfelt words, but for now, this is enough. It's enough to know she isn't just some experiment that went astray.

They crawl into bed together like they did as children, and Molly knows now the memories aren't real, but they feel real, and that's all that matters in the moment. They pile on the drab blankets and curl up face to face, with Dogmeat stretched out over their feet. Codsworth has settled down by the bedside as well, nestled on the floor with his arms tucked in, listening to them murmur back and forth.

Molly has questions, so many questions, and Navya answers them all. They cry, more than once, but in a way, it's soothing. She's cried into Navya’s shoulder so many times before, with or without counting the false memories, and it feels… good to get it all out in open.

Molly tells Navya about the Vault, about Nate and Shaun, Kellogg, the Institute. Navya hugs her tight, strokes her hair, sings that song Mammi taught her, about the golden grain.

She sleeps soundly for the first time since before the bombs fell.


End file.
